ZiboWade-Giles romanization Tzu-po, also called Chang-tien, Pinyin Zibo, or Zhangdianindustrial city and municipality (shihshi), central Shantung Shandong sheng (province(sheng), eastern China. The core of the present municipality was formed by amalgamating the two counties (hsien) of Tzu-ch’eng (Tzu-ch’uan) and Po-shan, which together form the richest coal field and mining area in the province. Tzu-ch’eng was an old-municipality is a regional city complex made up of five major towns: Zhangdian (Zibo), Linzi, Zhoucun, Zichuan, and Boshan. Each is now a district of the municipality. Zhangdian, in the north-central part of the municipality, is its administrative seat. Linzi constitutes the eastern district and Zhoucun the western. Stretching to the south are Zichuan and Boshan; the name Zibo was coined by combining the first character of each of these names. Pop. (2002 est.) city, 1,519,276; (2007 est.) urban agglom., 3,061,000.

History

Of the five towns, Linzi was the first to begin developing. Rich with farm produce and other resources, it was on the earliest east-west trunk road constructed at the foot of the northern slopes of the mountains in central Shandong. It served as the capital of the Qi state during the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu; 770–476 BCE) and the Warring States (Zhanguo; 475–221 BCE) periods. Zhoucun, west of Zhangdian, developed into a trading centre famous for its silks and silk products.

Zichuan was an old and established city and administrative centre.

Pan-yang

A Banyang county was established there in the 2nd century

BC

BCE; it subsequently fell into abeyance in the 3rd century

AD

CEbut was revived in the

6th

5th century under the name

Pei-ch’iu

Beiqiu county. In

596

598 it became the seat of a

prefecture, Tzu-chou, and in 598 received the name Tzu-ch’uan,

county named Zichuan, by which it was long known. It remained an important administrative centre and was also a focus of routes, being situated on the route skirting the northern edge of the

T’ai Mountains

Mount Tai complex, at the mouth of the valley leading up to

Po-shan

Boshan and to a pass over the mountains.

Po-shan

Boshan itself was a later development

, originally comprising two towns—Po-shan proper, which was first walled in 1558, and Yen-chen-chen

. The centre of an important

ceramic

ceramics and glass industry, in the 16th century it was

rich

wealthy enough to warrant having its own tax bureau. In 1734 the city had developed

enough

to the point that it could become an independent county.

Its contemporary

Zibo’s development into a major industrial complex began with the completion in 1904 of the railway linking

Tsingtao to Chi-nan, passing

the port city of Qingdao (east) to the provincial capital of Jinan (west), which passed to the north of

Tzu-ch’eng town,

Zichuan through the important market towns of

Chang-tien (now the seat of Tzu-po municipality) and Chou-ts’un

Zhangdian and Zhoucun. A branch line was built by the Germans from

Chang-tien to Po-shan

Zhangdian southward to Boshan, however, after they acquired coal-mining rights in a zone along the railway and began mining in the area around

Tzu-ch’eng

Zichuan. During World War I the Japanese controlled both the railway and the mines; in 1921 the mines came under the control of a Sino-Japanese company, the

Lu-ta

Luda Colliery Company. The

Po-shan

Boshan mines, which were developed later, in 1924, also passed into the control of a Sino-Japanese firm, the

Zichuan’s 600,000 tons. The local iron industry was also established before World War II. In 1919 the Japanese had founded the

Chin-ling-chen

Jinlingzhen Ironworks on the main railway

line a few miles

just east of

Chang-tien

Zhangdian, using supplies of local iron ore and coking coal from

Tzu-ch’eng.After 1949, when

Zichuan.

The contemporary city

After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, it was decided that the whole area

was

would be merged into a single municipality, which occurred in 1955; it was then developed into a major industrial base. During the 1950s and

1960s

’60s, when

Po-shan

Boshan was the seat of the municipality,

it

that district took the administrative name of the municipality,

Tzu-po

Zibo; subsequently, when the seat was

removed

transferred to

Chang-tien, it

Zhangdian, that district took the name of

Tzu-po

Zibo, and

Po-shan

Boshan resumed its former name. By 1963 the

city of Tzu-po (Po-shan)

municipality of Zibo had outstripped

Tsingtao

Qingdao as

Shantung’s

Shandong’s greatest industrial city. Between 1953 and 1958 the municipality’s population

rose

increased more than threefold, from 259,000 to 875,000. Within the enlarged municipality, growth was concentrated at

Po-shan and Tzu-po

Boshan and Zibo (the former

Chang-tien), each of which

Zhangdian); the population of each in the early 1970s was considerably

bigger than Tzu-ch’eng;

larger than that of Zichuan. By then the municipality

then

had a total population of more than 1,200,000.

Mining and heavy industry, machine building, and the manufacture of electrical equipment and batteries

were

are all major enterprises established in the early stages of Zibo’s growth. In addition to the traditional

ceramic

ceramics and glass industries, firebrick, refractory materials, and industrial ceramics are also manufactured.

There is also an important chemical industry. While heavy industry is concentrated in Tzu-ch’eng and Po-shan, Tzu-po (Chang-tien) and Chou-t’un—in addition to their growing roles as transportation centres—have developed as centres of textile manufacturing and food processing. Pop. (2003 est.) mun., 1,519,276

The discovery of several nearby oil fields in northern Shandong since the late 1960s spurred Zibo to become one of China’s major petrochemical industrial bases; a large plant was established in Linzi district in the 1980s. Power-generating, pharmaceutical, textile, and electronics industries have been developed as well. The city is a communications hub in the area, with rail lines and highways fanning out in all directions.

The excavated ruins of the ancient Qi capital city are located in the northern portion of Linzi district, and a museum displaying artifacts from the ancient city is also located in northern Linzi, in the town of Qidu. Pu Songling, a renowned Chinese fiction writer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, was a native of Zichuan, and his former residence in Zichuan district is now a museum. Boshan, located in a mountainous valley, is known for the beauty of the forested slopes surrounding it, and its popularity has grown as a tourist destination.